Guardian launches service to remove personal data from cars

Guardian Data Destruction, New Jersey, has launched a service that can permanently remove personal data stored in automobiles.

People who sync their phones to a late model vehicle should "be aware that their private information is transferred and stored on the car’s infotainment center" and will stay on the vehicle's system unless "manually removed and destroyed," Guardian says.

Clear My Data, an on-site subsidiary of Guardian Data Destruction, aims to protect vehicle owners' privacy and "ensure confidential and sensitive information" is not accessible to the next driver when buys the owner's car.

People who have synced their phones to their car and have given other Individuals, such as car dealerships and repair shops, temporary access to their vehicle are also at risk of fraud, identity theft and putting their personal information in the "wrong hands," the company says.

Clear My Data "provides a well-trained technician" to permanently delete digital Information stored in a vehicle's system. The service is available in the New Jersey metro area.

Green EnviroTech president steps down

Company founder and former President and CEO Gary De Laurentiis will resume position.

California-based Green EnviroTech Holdings Corp. (GETH) has announced changes to its management team and a new addiction to its board of directors, effective immediately.

After two years, GETH president and CEO Chris Bowers has stepped down from his position as president and board of directors' member to “focus on other professional and philanthropic endeavors,” the company says. Bowers will remain as a consultant, with emphasis on expanding an existing financial relationship.

GETH’s founder and former President and CEO Gary De Laurentiis will resume the position of CEO as Bowers departs.

“I speak for the entire management team and our strategic partners when I say that we are grateful for the energy and enthusiasm Chris brought to the team during his tenure,” De Laurentiis says. “I look forward with enthusiasm to resuming the position of CEO while advancing the ongoing projects in which I and the rest of the team are presently engaged.”

Green EnviroTech also appointed Robert "Skip" Anderson as a new member of its board of directors. Anderson has been involved in the recycling industry since 1964, when he purchased New York-based Richmond Iron and Metal Recycling, the first of many scrap businesses he owned.

Anderson and De Laurentiis became acquainted in 2010 when Anderson discovered an illegal tire dump buried beneath one of his recycling yards and needed to find a disposal solution.

“I am very much looking forward to joining the GETH team,” Anderson says. “Our primary objectives in the New Year are getting the company into a strong revenue position and increasing shareholder value. We will accomplish this by rolling out as many GETH tire processing plants as we can, both domestically and internationally.”

The company also announced Craig Fischer at GETH’s outside media relations liaison.

How abandoned fishing nets are recycled into nylon

Last month, Norway-based Nofir collected 24 tons of discarded fishing nets from Antarctica’s oceans. After the nets are dismantled and cleaned, Nofir sends them off to Italy-based Aquafil to be processed into nylon yarn.

Nofir was established in 2008 in response to increasing reports of fishing nets by Norwegian environmental organizations and fisherman.The company aims to not only recover and recycle material, but to “reduce pollution caused by discarded nets.”

Nofir's recycling process includes collecting, dismantling, sorting, cleaning and transporting the nets to Aquafil’s facility in Slovenia, where nets undergo a journey from "waste to wear." According to Aquafil’s research, one ton of nylon nets can create 26,000 socks.

“We’re happy and proud to collect waste from such a distant area like Antarctica,” says Nofir CEO Øistein Aleksandersen. “Arctic nets are cleaned, cut and packed manually by workers in our factory. Soon they will be sent for recycling and ending up as new products, like swimsuits.”

"Turning nets into raw material is not only good resource management, but in cases such as this one, also a great win for the environment as the discarded equipment will not end up in the ocean,” he adds.

To date, Nofir has collected more than 30,000 tons of fishing nets from Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States.

Over the past five years, organizations and companies throughout the world have been working together under the Healthy Seas initiative to clean oceans of fishing nets and then recycle the nets into sustainable apparel.

In October, Aquafil says divers removed four tons of submerged fishing nets off the coast of Italy. “Ghost fishing nets” account for 10 percent of all ocean plastic. November, another team of divers managed to remove one ton, or 30 percent, of nets that were covering a reef in Santorini, Greece. Divers report another nearby reef is “completely covered” by nets.

According to Aquafil, the Slovenian plant has recycled 375 tons of fishing nets.

In December, Aquafil opened its first U.S.-based carpet recycling facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Old carpets broken down into nylon will be shipped to the Slovenian facility to be converted, together with fishing nets, into yarn for the fashion and interior industries, the company says.

AF&PA president, CEO announces retirement

Donna Harman has represented the interests of the forest products industry for 29 years.

Donna Harman, the longest-serving president and CEO in the 25-year history of the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), Washington, announced her retirement Jan. 16. She has represented the interests of the forest products industry for the past 29 years and AF&PA member companies for 18 years, including the last 12 years as president and CEO.

According to an AF&PA news release, Spencer Stuart has been retained to lead a search for her successor. Harman’s retirement will become effective later in 2019 once the search and transition are successfully completed.

Under Harman’s leadership, AF&PA developed and implemented a public policy advocacy program that accomplished major energy, environmental, tax and trade and product policy successes at both the federal and state level, AF&PA reports. Those accomplishments included leading efforts to: prevent premature termination of an alternative energy tax credit; achieve a revised Environmental Protection Agency Boiler MACT rule that reduced industry capital costs from a proposed $9 billion to $1 billion; drive passage and enactment of long-advocated carbon neutrality legislation in 2017; and protect the industry’s products and their employees from mandates, fees and bans and anti-biomass legislation in dozens of states.

“It has been an honor to help one of the nation’s most important manufacturing industries navigate changing political and public policy dynamics throughout my career at AF&PA and in Washington, D.C. I am grateful for the opportunity to promote the interests of paper and wood products manufacturers and the 950,000 workers who make products that improve our daily lives,” Harman says. “I have been fortunate to serve with an incredible group of industry leaders and amazingly talented association staff. I am confident the association and the industry it represents, has a bright future ahead. Paper and wood products manufacturers know that continuous innovation and attention to customer needs are the path to a sustainable future. Ensuring that government policies help, rather than hinder, future success is what AF&PA is about.”

During a time of major economic and industry business model transformation, Harman adapted the focus of the association to ensure it continued to serve the changing needs of one of the largest manufacturing sectors in the nation, AF&PA reports. Her leadership was pivotal in shepherding the creation of two major industry initiatives: Better Practices, Better Planet 2020 – the first of its kind industrywide set of quantifiable and verifiable sustainability goals, several of which have been achieved ahead of schedule, and a $25 million paper promotion program now known as the Paper+Packaging Board.

“AF&PA members benefited tremendously from Donna’s leadership,” says Pete Watson, president and CEO of Ohio-based Greif Inc. and incoming 2019 AF&PA board chair. “Her consensus building skills helped the industry to speak with one voice and find new allies and coalition partners on many issues. The solid foundation she leaves behind will help a new leader propel the industry and association forward to meet the advocacy challenges we will face in the future.”

Harman, a frequent speaker at conferences and events, has served in a range of cross-industry leadership roles such as chair of the National Association of Manufacturers Council of Manufacturing Associations, president of the International Council of Forest & Paper Associations, secretary treasurer for the Forest Products Industry National Labor Management Committee and a member of the BIPAC board of directors.

Originally from Dodge City, Kansas, Harman earned a bachelor’s degree in public affairs from Anderson University (Indiana) and a law degree from the American University. She joined AF&PA as vice president, congressional affairs in 2001, after having worked previously in government affairs for Champion International Corporation and The Dow Chemical Company as well as in Congress as a legislative assistant. She was named AF&PA senior vice president for policy and government affairs in 2006 and then as the association’s president and CEO in 2007.